Oral Storytelling Web

Stories are the houses we live in

Stories are the houses we live in. They are the food we set on the table, consume, and absorb into the blood. Stories do not exist fully, however, except in the physical presence of those who tell them. Later, mysteriously, they maintain this physicality when they well up to our inner eyes and resound in our inner ears in the process we call memory. Storytellers are thus the architects and masons of our universe. They build arcs of invisible stone that span huge banquet rooms. They also build the commonplace rooms that shelter us routinely. Whether in grand or humble style, storytellers serve us the spiritual food we live by, both the plain truths and the more delicious lies.

Who are the storytellers, then? … [In fact,] we are all both storytellers and story hearers. We must be both these things if we are to navigate the world in which we live, each part of which … is partly our own making. Barring some terrible trauma, these twin faculties of storytelling and story hearing are inalienably ours from a very early age. Throughout life these faculties remain at the core of our intelligent being, shaping our thoughts, calling us back from error, and guiding us incrementally toward whatever our future may hold.

John Niles, Homo Narrans: The Poetics and Anthropology of Oral Literature, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999: 64-65